What do you think is the state of the blues today?

PG: I think the astonishing thing is the extent to which it’s entered into the common language of our culture, how things that were once considered completely esoteric have become almost commonplace in our cultural language. When you see the extent to which the community at large is familiar with Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf, or how world music influences have come into the blues that we listen to today through singers like Cory Harris or Alvin Youngblood Hart or Chris Thomas King — the way in which the broad spectrum of music is reflected both in and through the blues is beyond anything I could ever have imagined.

From my point of view, the survival of the blues form as such is a lot more in doubt. But what isn’t in doubt is the survival of the feeling that lies behind the blues. I think the idea of replicating past forms, of imitating past fashions somehow or attempting to sound like something that was done before, is not the way in which any music form survives. It seems to me it's through the work of people who take off from traditional forms, like Cory and Alvin and Chris, that you create a new form of music. The other thing, of course, is the way in which the blues has been absorbed into the pop mainstream in ways that many contemporary musicians may not even recognize or fully understand. That’s the way in which the blues survive.

Do you think experimentation takes away from the “authenticity” of the blues?

No. I think the point is that you can only create music within the context of the times in which you live. While there is a place for archival preservation, the idea of preserving the blues as a kind of musical Plymouth Plantation is not really a feasible one, and it seems to me that the extent to which any music survives, whether it’s classic songwriting or rhythm and blues or blues or gospel, you always have to take into account the transmutations that are necessarily going to occur due to changing contexts and changing cultural influences. I think it’s far more up to us, not necessarily to endorse every experiment — I mean the fact that you applaud experimentation doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be drawn to every experiment — but I think it’s up to us to keep our ears open for new means of expression, because this is the way in which the blues were born. It was through people having their ears open to new sounds. And it’s the only way in which music of any kind has validity or is able to survive. So if we were looking for a static form, we'd always have to be looking backwards.

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